Guess what Jayhawks? Homecoming is back in KU! For those who are unfamiliar with what exactly is this homecoming, well it's simply an annual event held by a university to welcome visiting alumni's. This year's homecoming was held from September 21st until September 27th. The KU Alumni Association held countless exciting activities throughout the whole week and this year's theme was Roll with the Hawks.
To name some of those activties is the Glow KU tradition. Students from on-campus and off-campus showed off their school spirits by decorating their buildings with red, blue, yellow and white lights (Christmas is coming early I guess). This year, Sigma Kappa sorority won first place! And behold, their Glow KU house!
To kick things off that very Monday, the Homecoming Sign Competition was held in front of Watson Library's Lawn. Students of KU got to show their creativity by decorating a plywood signs. Since the Homecoming's theme was Roll with The Hawks, there were a lot of board games that students used to inspire their design.
Another fun event was the Chalk 'n' Rock competition. Students passing by Wescoe Beach last Tuesday would know what happened there! You could see a lot of students working hard and absolutely having fun decorating the sidewalks in front of Wescoe Hall using only chalk!
But the most anticipated event for this whole week where everyone has been long waiting for was the HOMECOMING PARADE! This I when all of KU students and the Lawrence community get together at Massachusetts Street in Downtown Lawrence to get their school spirits on and support KU's football team for the upcoming Homecoming football game.
So of course, the Malaysian Student Association took part in this parade to represent our beloved country! Even though not many of the Malaysian students could make it, those who still came made the best out of it and had a blast!
We took the bus from Kansas Union all the way to Downtown. All the international students of KU had gathered at South Park on Massachusetts Street.
Steven Sweat, one of the program coordinators from the International Student Services, was in charge for the day and helped distributing all the country's flag.
While waiting for all everyone to gather around, we took the opportunity to meet new international friends and took pictures with them!
Finally, the official photograph session took place. Knowing that there were more over than 100 countries, it was a bit difficult trying to fit everyone into the picture (let alone seeing our faces haha) but we managed to pull through and got perfect shots!
Of course we had to have our own little Malaysian group photography session. All thanks to the club's official photographer, Zee! By the looks on our faces and how huge our smiles were, you could tell that we were super excited for the parade to start! Two of the club's member, Aaron and Brandon, had proudly worn their old PLKN uniform from years ago. As for the ladies, Tabitha Yu Wei Zee and Puteri, had worn our traditional clothing of baju kurung and cheongsam. We were absolutely in high Malaysian spirits that day!
And when I said high spirits, I really did mean it! We took the time to reenact the monumental statue of Malaysia's Tugu Negara. Here is a picture edited by the Club's Vice President, Jason Eng. You could say that we came really close to it right?
After countless and hundreds of photos taken, the parade had officially started and you could hear the music playing from the marching band, the cheers from the crowd and the chants from all the students of KU. Downtown Lawrence was the place to be on Friday! You could see all the theme-based floats, all the vehicles and banners making its way along Massachusetts Street. Most of all, I am pretty sure everyone saw us happily waving our Malaysian Flag and even singing the national anthem Negaraku!
The parade soon came to an end but we were still in high spirits, so we continued on taking more photos and re-enacting the Tugu Negara once more since more Malaysian students joined us.
We absolutely had a wonderful time throughout the whole Homecoming Week in KU! Hopefully next year's homecoming would have more exciting events and there would be more Malaysian students joining us in this annual tradition. Rockchalk Malaysia!
